“Another great event to arrive upon the round earth is this. The English have in North America domains great, strong, rich, well regulated. There are in New England a parliament, governors, troops, white inhabitants in abundance, riches, and, what is worse, a marine.
“I say that some fine morning these dominions may separate from England, rise and erect themselves into an independent republic.
“What will happen then? Do people think of this? A country civilized by the arts of Europe, in a condition to communicate with it by the present perfection of its marine, and which will thus appropriate our arts in proportion to their improvement,--patience! such a country in several centuries will make great progress in population and in refinement; such a country in a short time will render itself master of America, and especially of the gold-mines.”
Then, dwelling on the extension of commercial freedom and the improvement of the means of communication, he exclaims, with lyrical outburst:--
“And you will then see how beautiful the earth will be! what culture! what new arts and new sciences! what safety for commerce! Navigation will precipitate all nations towards each other. A day will come when one will go about in a populous and orderly city of California as one goes in the stage-coach of Meaux.”[331]
The published works of D’Argenson do not enable us to fix the precise date of these remarkable words. They are from the “Thoughts on the Reformation of the State,” and the first three paragraphs appear to have been written as early at least as 1733, while his intimacy with the Abbé Saint-Pierre was at its height; the fourth somewhat later;[332] but all preceding Turgot and John Adams. Each, however, spoke from his own soul, and without prompting.
Among the illustrious names of France few equal that of Turgot. He was a philosopher among ministers, and a minister among philosophers. Malesherbes said of him, that he had the heart of L’Hôpital and the head of Bacon. Such a person in public affairs was an epoch for his country and for the human race. Had his spirit prevailed, the bloody drama of the French Revolution would not have occurred, or it would at least have been postponed: I think it could not have occurred. He was a good man, who sought to carry into government the rules of goodness. His career from beginning to end was one continuous beneficence. Such a nature was essentially prophetic, for he discerned the natural laws by which the future is governed.